


your fingers weave quick minarets

by nerdsandthelike



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (if you know what I mean), (sad. I mean sad.), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon-Compliant, M/M, Vietnam War, canon-typical Klaus Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25405687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdsandthelike/pseuds/nerdsandthelike
Summary: According to Five, they have an apocalypse to stop in the future and here Klaus is fifty years too early trying to get in the pants of some probably straight GI who Ben keeps reminding him looks like Luther before the protein shakes. Because he’s not Allison, Klaus decides to put that particular observation waaaaaayyy to the side.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	your fingers weave quick minarets

**Author's Note:**

> So I may have read all the comics and watched season one in about a week. And when I finished I had thoughts about what it means to send Klaus back to serve in Vietnam. So this is what I have decided to do with my years of academic research on queer history! 
> 
> Also, this was written post-season 2 trailer but pre-season 2, so when the last bit especially gets made officially non-canon, that's why. 
> 
> Thank you to the lovely Eiiri for the beta and for listening to me rant whenever my research wasn't going well. 
> 
> Title from The Doors "Soul Kitchen" because this soundtrack slaps and titles are hard. 
> 
> Additional warnings: canon-typical drug use, mild violence appropriate to the Vietnam War, allusions to what probably counts as sex work, major character death (well, major in our hearts anyway), HIV positive character, fairly frank conversations about sex. If you see anything else that I didn't include, please let me know!

A Shau Valley, Vietnam. 1968

Klaus knows he should turn around the second he lands in that hellhole. But he’s in shock and coming off of a full day of torture, and he’s in withdrawal from more drugs than he can put a name to. And the first fucking thing he sees is a gorgeous guy in army green. And Klaus could never resist a uniform. Any uniform. When he was sixteen there had been this girl who worked at this suuuuuuper expensive hotel, but as a bellhop and she had pulled maroon off shockingly well. Well, not as well as Klaus had pulled it off of her. And then pulled her wallet. Reggie had been too careful about his collection to risk stealing from home while he was alive.

So when he lands in Vietnam, he’s distracted by abs, and then someone yells at him, and he goes with it. The next day the angel smiles at him and introduces himself as Dave, and even when he has the chance to open that briefcase and maybe get back, he doesn’t. He stays in Vietnam in the middle of a war zone for a smile. The sergeant has no record of him, but fuck it, they need the bodies for their pointless war, so they keep him. 

Ben looks at him like he’s nuts. According to Five, they have an apocalypse to stop in the future and here Klaus is fifty years too early trying to get in the pants of some probably straight GI who Ben keeps reminding him looks like Luther before the protein shakes. Because he’s not Allison, Klaus decides to put that particular observation waaaaaayyy to the side. 

‘Nam is hell, but he doesn’t leave. When he’s not being shot at he has a dry place to sleep and three squares and drugs are somehow much easier to get on the front lines than they were in Hargreeves’s house. He can’t even hear Ben’s disapproval over the roar of the blood in his ears most of the time. He’s a little cautious about his whole aggressively queer thing at first, but the future wasn’t always a picnic either, and so he starts to notice. Strand a bunch of guys hundreds of miles from women and put them through hell and not even Uncle Sam can stop boys from bein’ boys. So he learns pretty quickly about the illicit trade that goes on in all barracks, and soon enough he knows who to blow for drugs or money or a shift on watch that isn’t at four in the fucking morning. It’s just process of elimination, then, which ones you don’t approach so you don’t get the shit kicked out of you. And damn Klaus’s luck, but isn’t precious angel Dave in the later category. Not that Dave would hurt him. Klaus hopes. He seems too sweet for that, and they are friends, and sometimes he catches a look out of the corner of his eye, but when he looks again, it’s always gone. And it’s the sixties, so who fucking knows what Dave might do if Klaus tried? Klaus just isn’t willing to risk it, since Dave is firmly on the implicit do not approach list. There are plenty of fish in the barracks, though none quite so pretty. 

When Klaus can’t get the good shit (or even the bad shit, god knows he’s not picky about anything), Ben uses Dave’s spectacular unavailability as a way to berate Klaus into going back. But Klaus prefers this particular apocalypse to the one he might have to face with his family, so it doesn’t work. Maybe if he gets lucky, he’ll die here and his family won’t have to worry about him while they’re trying to save the world. Should be easier on them. 

So by the time he’s been there three months, they get leave in Saigon and honestly Klaus thinks about jumping ship. He was never officially on the records as being in his company, so he doesn’t think that they could get him for desertion. When they get to the club, there’s even a gorgeous local girl working and Klaus has always been charming if you don’t look too closely. He’s picking up Vietnamese, so when she asks his drink order, he asks her name in Vietnamese. He can’t go much further, but she appreciates the effort and laughs at him as he tries to get the right tone for her name. They’re chatting. Her mom runs the club, and she helps out since her English is better, and Klaus thinks that it might not be a bad place to go AWOL. She’s charming, and looks like she might be interested. It’s clean and safe and- 

And that’s when he notices that Dave is Looking at him. Dave’s his friend, it’s not strange that he would be glancing his direction. But that’s not what he’s doing. It’s a Look that Klaus recognizes. He turns around to see if there’s a girl behind him that it’s focused on. There’s not. It might be the girl next to him, but he doesn’t think so. 

Fuck it, he thinks, might as well give it a shot. If it goes badly, he can always desert like he planned anyway and shack up with some local or sneak back to the States. He guesses that the future is also an option, but he’s not sure he likes that either. He kisses the girl on the cheek and says “I think my buddy over there needs me,” and god he hopes it’s true. He goes over to Dave sitting alone in a corner with a beer, and yup, he’s still Looking. At Klaus. Interesting. 

“Having fun?” Klaus says and it’s not his best opening line, but with all the substances in his system, he’s surprised it’s that good. And really, he usually doesn’t need a line when someone is looking at him like that. 

Dave nods and smiles at him, and curiouser and curiouser, that’s a new kind of smile. “You?”

“It certainly beats the mess back at camp.”

Dave laughs. “Wanna dance?”

“Well I have been known to get my groove thang on now and again.”

Dave pushes back from the bar and Klaus can’t help staring at those arms. My god. 

They dance, and it’s not together, but it’s not that they aren’t together, and it’s a good thing that Klaus can do just about anything while high as a kite, because most people would need to be sober to untangle these mixed signals. They move from dancing to shots, and the signals get less mixed when Dave threads his arm through Klaus’s. Klaus nearly chokes on the shitty vodka because he’s so distracted by having Dave’s face this close. Fuck, three months of wanting and not having have turned him back into a fumbling kid again. And it’s been well over a decade since he could claim that. Dave just laughs at Klaus’s clumsiness and tries to lead him to the bathroom to get cleaned up, which, Klaus thinks, is promising. But they start talking about the weird android dreams book that Dave loved so much he lent it to Klaus, who now finds himself trying to defend androids without letting on that he was raised by one, and somehow this conversation winds up leaned against a wall. It’s not really private, but it’s good enough (or Dave’s drunk enough, and Klaus is too close to Dave’s gorgeous face to try to sort out how he feels about that) for Dave to reach up and touch his face. Klaus keeps moving the conversation, doesn’t want to scare off someone when he’s so close to actually getting his hands on that body, but he moves a little closer, testing the waters. 

Dave clearly lacks his patience, because before Klaus can even make his point about empathy for animals (without revealing that he was also raised by a chimpanzee), Dave is kissing him with only the slightest bead curtain between them and the dance floor. Oh, and Klaus had thought he was shy, but there is nothing shy or even polite about that kiss or those hands. And thank fuck, Klaus isn’t sure he could wait any longer. 

He drags Dave out to a back alley. He doesn’t think Ramirez will start anything. He seems plenty distracted by the dancing and the alcohol, and considering what he let Klaus do last week, he’s not too worried regardless, but it’s worth some privacy all the same. Dave pushes him up against a wall, and Klaus isn’t sure that he could handle all this sensation sober. Then Dave drops to his knees, and Klaus isn’t too far gone to put a stop to that. “Oh whoa whoa whoa, buddy,” he says trying to haul Dave back to his feet. Dave is solid and Klaus can barely stand, so it’s not particularly effective. “Damn, you are built like a brick house. I get it now. He’s a brick… house” Klaus starts to sing, and Dave looks even more confused. “After your time, I’m afraid. Don’t worry, you’ll get there,” he says, stroking the side of Dave’s head absently. 

“So did you stop me to sing a song, or can I get back to-“ Dave gestures at the zip of Klaus’s very tight pants. 

“Ah, well, yes, there is that. I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” 

“Is this some kind of weird power thing?”

“No, no. Though, I mean, I’m into that if you are. We can negotiate that later. But…” Klaus fumbles for a moment. The only thing worse than trying to explain HIV to someone in 1968 would be accidentally starting the AIDS crisis a decade early. He hasn’t encountered this particular problem before, since in the informal economy of the barracks, there’s always something that he wants more than getting his dick sucked. “We just can’t. Unless you have a rubber.” Klaus claps his hands and feels like a cheerleader for just a moment. “Safe sex and all! Prevent VDs!”

“Seriously?” Dave is not impressed.

“Yes?” Klaus tries.

“But just with me-“

“Yes!” Klaus says. Then he catches himself. “I mean no! I mean, wait, you knew?”

“That you have blown every willing guy within a fifty mile radius in the last three months? Yeah, you were not subtle.” 

Ooh he is sarcastic. He’s never been sarcastic before. That’s fun. 

“I wasn’t trying for subtle,” Klaus explains with his absolute last ounce of patience. “I was trying to get in your pants!”

“And so now that we’re here the problem is…?”

“Aaaaagh god do we have to do this now? I have been waiting so long to get my hands on that ass and I am so! Close!” Klaus grabs helplessly in the direction of said ass. 

“I’m happy to keep going, but somebody stopped me! And now won’t tell me why!” Dave is genuinely frustrated now, and that’s unfair, because it’s very attractive Klaus does not need to be more turned on right now. 

“No, look! We can do lots of things! We should do lots of things! Just not this. In this particular configuration.” He gestures down at Dave. 

“Why not?”

“I- I don’t like blowjobs?” Klaus tries lying. 

“Bullshit,” Dave says. “You’re a man.”

“Eh,” Klaus says, shrugging. “Not really, but even if I was, not all men even have penises so that was shockingly transphobic of you. And even cis men are allowed to have different preferences-“

The longer he talks the more completely lost Dave looks. 

“Oh right, I guess it is the sixties. We’ll talk about gender literally any other time. I think you’ll get it eventually. Your grandkids will thank me for it.”

“Klaus.” Dave’s voice is warning. 

“I have a VD.” Klaus tries telling the truth. “But it’s a secret. And so I can’t go to the doctors. And you can’t tell anyone.” He really needs to work on telling the truth. He’s so out of practice that even to his own ears it sounds less honest than his actual lie did. 

Dave gives up and gets to his feet. He looks upset, and this time it’s not even hot. It just pulls at Klaus’s heart a little, and he is not prepared for that. 

“Hey, hey, Dave. Dave.” Klaus catches his hand as he turns to leave. “I’m sorry. I just-“ he turns Dave’s hand and threads his fingers through Dave’s palm to palm and Klaus genuinely didn’t know he could be that gentle. “It’s just complicated. My whole life is complicated. And hard to explain.” In the understatement of the century. He bends his knees and looks up to a deity he’s pretty sure is not at all invested in his life or happiness. “But holy fuck I like you so much and can we please do something? Soon? Now preferably? There’s too much to try to catch you up right now, and I have wanted you since the second I showed up in that tent.”

Dave considers him. “Fine,” he says finally. 

“Oh thank god,” Klaus says, surging forward to kiss him again. 

“But.” Dave stops him with a finger to his lips. “We wait til the hotel. And then we can do anything you want. Since you insist on rubbers. Why I’m not sure, since it’s not like I can knock you up.”

“Weirder things have happened to me,” Klaus offers. 

“Deal?” Dave tilts his head, and Klaus would have gone to the moon and stolen Luther’s favorite record if Dave had asked for it. 

“Deal,” Klaus says, sticking out his hand to shake on it. 

Dave laughs at the outstretched hand and kisses him instead. Klaus isn’t entirely sure his legs will get him all the way to the hotel, but after that kiss he’ll get there if he has to crawl. 

He is far too sober when he wakes up the next morning. Hungover as hell, but that’s not good enough. Because Ben is standing there, and if looks could kill, Klaus would be out of his misery. 

“Congratulations,” Ben says, but weirdly enough he doesn’t sound happy about it. “You fucked him. Climbed the mountain of man that you’ve been aiming for since we got here. Can we go now?”

“Good to see you too, brother dear. It’s been a while.” He smiles at Ben without any humor, and slides out of bed, trying not to disturb Dave. “Drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs,” he sings under his breath as he searches through the clothes on the floor. “How do I not have anything?” He says when he comes up empty-handed. 

“Because you did them all last night?” Dave says groggily from the bed.

“Shit! That is probably it, isn’t it? Well I have some more next door. I’ll just pop over and grab them and be right back.” He pulls on a pair of Dave’s pants, which are nearly falling off him, kisses Dave thoroughly and skips out of the room, ignoring Ben’s glare. 

He doesn’t actually make it back to Dave’s room. He does as much of his stash as he can without dying (probably. He has years of experience guesstimating and nearly dying. He’ll be fine.) because Ben won’t stop fucking staring at him like that. And he decides to brush his teeth and the next thing he knows, he’s being woken up off the floor by several members of his company telling him that the bus back to the front is leaving. 

Neither Dave nor Ben look very happy with him. 

Well, shit. 

Fortunately, Dave doesn’t seem to hold it against him. Or maybe he does, but it’s in the fun way, behind the mess hall on a late watch. He has been a little distant the last week, but Klaus hasn’t really thought much about it. They share a cigarette afterwards, and Klaus itches for something stronger, but he’ll have to wait til he’s off duty to get back to the barracks. 

They don’t have long, anyway, if they stay back here much longer someone will notice, and Dave knows it too. He flicks the cigarette out into the night and turns back to Klaus. Dave takes Klaus’s head in his hands, and it feels like he’s trying to memorize his face. He turns it gently, fingers running over Klaus’s stubble. He leans in and kisses him lightly and Klaus wishes so much that his power was mind reading and not seeing dead people. 

They’re still friends. Dave has always been friendly, and it doesn’t surprise anyone that they stay close, but they don’t talk about it. It’s not a real relationship, not that Klaus knows what that’s like. But they’re either talking about everything except whatever the fuck is going on between them, or they’re fucking and not talking. It suits him well enough, but he does have one question. And patience has never been his virtue.

“Why did it take you so long?” He asks as they’re getting dressed again one evening.

“Huh?” Dave doesn’t seem to register the question. He has learned to accept a lot of Klaus’s quirks, his seemingly arbitrary rules about what they can do together, his insistence on wearing eyeliner despite everything, his habit of talking to the air whenever he gets too sober. So he has just gone along with the not talking pattern they had fallen into after that first time in Saigon. If Klaus was feeling especially perceptive, he might consider that Dave doesn’t like it. He’s the kind who would want to talk. But it’s hard enough for Klaus to keep his head on his shoulders. And even if he was inclined to cuddles and sweet nothings, they’re in a military camp in the middle of the fucking jungle, and while there was plenty that Uncle Sam will overlook, it’s rude to tempt fate. She’s a bitch like that. So it’s generally easier to not talk. 

But Klaus has to know. 

“I’m not exactly subtle or hard to get,” he explains. “You could have had me at any point over those first three months. Why wait til Saigon?”

Dave’s face tightens as he pulls on his pants. “I had a boyfriend. It wouldn’t have been right.”

“A boyfriend? Really? What happened to him?”

“He got blown up in Laos a month before you showed up. I got a letter from his mom. Good woman. She didn’t have to tell me.” Klaus can hear the pain in his voice.

“Shit.” 

“Yeah.” They are both still and silent. Klaus doesn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. 

“How long had you been together?” It’s all he can think of to ask.

“Two years before I got drafted. The dumb bastard decided that he’d join up to avoid getting drafted, since I wasn’t around anymore. Went into the Air Force. He was good enough for that. But it didn’t save him. He wasn’t even over here a full month before-“ Dave cuts himself off before he has to say it. 

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I can’t even imagine. The longest I’ve ever been with someone is… three weeks, and I only stayed because there was a roof over my head and it beat rehab. And he really was an incredible cook. Omelettes every morning. But two years. I can’t imagine. And then-” Klaus cuts himself off. “I’m sorry. I’m just sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Nobody did. Not over here. They couldn’t. People back home did. Not many, but still. When he was still alive, I couldn’t… do anything. It felt wrong. And then once he was gone… it took some time to be ready again.”

Klaus walks over and runs his hand through Dave’s hair. That’s comforting, right? It seems to work for Dave. But he seems far away and lost in thought, so it’s a surprise when he’s the first one to come back to the present. 

“Three weeks?” Dave says out of the silence.

“What?”

“That was your record? Three weeks?”

“Uh, yeah, and not a great three weeks, honestly, omelettes aside.”

“It’s been a month since Saigon.”

Klaus counts back and smiles. “A month with you. Well Private Katz, I guess we have a new record holder.” Dave’s worth the record far more than omelette guy. 

Dave kisses him, and this time Klaus doesn’t feel weak in his knees, he feels an unfamiliar tug in his chest. 

It’s another week before he can ask his next question. This time, it’s broad daylight and they’re cleaning their guns next to each other outside the tent. There’s no one around, but it’s not really private. 

“Why me?” Klaus asks. 

“What?” Dave looks up at him. 

“I get now why it took you so long to make a move, after…” Klaus gestures in a way that he hopes is respectful before plunging forward. “But there are dozens of guys around. Why pick the scrawny guy with the weird tats” the traumatized and literally haunted addict with nightmares, a currently-fatal virus, and the most fucked up family on the planet, Klaus adds silently, “when there is a whole camp full of hot soldiers too far away from women to turn down whatever they can get.”

Dave scrunches his forehead when he thinks. “That’s a fair question, I guess. But what’s your answer? I mean, why me? Turnaround’s fair play and all.”

“Oh that’s easy, I looked up and saw your abs and thought ‘yes please.’ But, the key to this question is that I am demonstrably less picky than you are.”

Klaus thinks that Dave might be blushing. “I don’t know, you seemed different.”

You have no idea. 

“More like me.” Dave continues. “These guys will go back to wives and girlfriends. You won’t.”

“I also like girls! I mean, women. Most people, really.”

“Yeah. But you don’t have a girl back home that you’ll settle down and raise beautiful pale children with. That was obvious early on.”

“So you just zeroed in on me as the biggest fairy of the bunch?” Klaus thinks that’s probably fair. Even in the past, he might as well have a rainbow tattooed on his forehead. Wait. Does Dave know about the rainbow? Is that a thing yet?

“You get an intuition about these things, you know?” Dave shrugs. 

“Good to know at least one of us has functioning gaydar.”

“Gaydar?” Klaus really has to stop using slang from the future. Dave’s cute when he’s confused, but it’s still not nice to confuse him on purpose. 

“You know, like a radar, but it picks up signals from the other queers?”

“Oh. Funny. And you don’t have that?”

“Nah, I just assume that everyone is interested in everyone. And then sometimes I get punched when I’m wrong. There was this one time when I was a kid and I got totally decked by this lesbian at a bar because I thought she was flirting with me, which maybe she was at first. I had a very smooth face at the time, and I was in a dress, but at some point she tried telling me that I wasn’t her type and I was definitely too high to notice- But you know, I also sometimes get punched when I’m right that someone likes me. Usually not worth it to waste your time with those assholes.” Klaus pauses to consider. “Unless they’re rich.”

Dave has that look on his face that he gets whenever Klaus has said too much. 

On some level, it’s a fucking amazing six months. On another level, he’s in the middle of a war zone in 1968, and he could die at any moment. But he tries to focus on the positives. He’s seen enough shit in this life to take the good where he can get it. And when he’s not in combat, he’s with Dave. Klaus didn’t know that he could feel like this. He remembers as kids, Five once told them a story about a man who had been struck by lightning and afterwards couldn’t feel pain. He just… didn’t hurt anymore. He could burn himself, cut off a finger, and it wouldn’t hurt at all. Knowing what a little shit his brother always was, this could have all been bullshit to scare the rest of them. But it has stuck with him. He had always kind of thought that with the drugs and the shitty family and the years of living wherever the hell he could doing whatever he had to to survive, he’d burned off all his ability to really feel. A long, slow lightning strike that left him numb. You could kick him like a dog and tell him to fuck off and die, and it couldn’t touch him, not really. 

But Dave gets in there. It takes him months to realize what it is. He’s always kind of thought that love was a joke, something they made up to keep you in line. Some sort of bogeyman for the straights and their brainwashed offspring. But here he is, staying in the miserable jungle in the middle of a war when he has a perfectly good out, just because a pretty guy smiled at him. Even Ben has stopped trying to get him to go back. He’s less of a bitch about being stuck in the past now. Klaus hasn’t told him that it is love, of course. Klaus can’t bring himself to say the words out loud, but Ben isn’t an idiot. He can tell. He almost seems proud sometimes.

It isn’t always perfect. Klaus is still an addict and a pain in the ass. Dave is still mourning the man he loves. They don’t talk for a week one time when Klaus almost OD’s again. They don’t talk, but they still fuck. And Dave may be furious, but he is a softie at heart. Sap. And eventually Klaus wins him back over with what cuddles he can get in an outpost in A Shau. 

If he’s a sap, then what does that make Klaus? As they talk, Klaus learns more about him. He was a member of Mattachine back in Chicago (“you’re a machine? I’ll say!” “Seriously Klaus? It’s an organization. For rights. For ya know, people like us.”) and Klaus nearly bursts with wanting to tell Dave that it works. That he comes from a future that is complete hell, but if Klaus wanted to turn black widow, he’d have double the options. Dave is Jewish, has always wanted to go to space, but he’s only made it to the office of a meat packing plant and then the other side of the Pacific. He did a couple of years at college in physics, and he was damn good too, but his dad died two years in, and he still had two kid siblings to help feed and clothe. His little brother is a professor, now, and his sister has become a hippie, but he is so damn proud of them both. In return, Klaus tells Dave what he can. He has six siblings, all adopted. One dead. Ben is there for that conversation, and is not pleased with how Klaus describes him. Dad’s an asshole, died right before I came out, and good riddance. It wasn’t of any use trying to hide from Dave that he was mostly homeless and useless, because he can tell that Dave doesn’t love that about him. He is such an upstanding sort of boy. He isn’t the type to fall for a mess like Klaus. But somehow Dave stays anyway, and Klaus had never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s had so few of them. And he loves Dave too much to leave, even if Dave doesn’t- can’t feel the same way. So when Dave gets tired of him or goes back to the US and finds an equally pretty boy with a good job and the correct political inclinations to move in with as “bachelors,” Klaus can go back to the future and if Five is right, he’ll die soon anyway. Everybody’s happy. 

Except that Klaus doesn’t die, and Dave does. He won’t get that good partner with a steady job. He’ll never understand the joke about “Brick House.” No man on the moon, no Stonewall, no end of this fucking war, no precious adopted grandkids and happy life, nothing but a form letter back to his mom and a slick body in Klaus’s arms. 

He rips off Dave’s dog tags, tries desperately not to see Ben, and runs back through the battle to the barracks. He’s still too much in shock to cry as he opens the briefcase and finds himself on a bus going through a familiar city. 

Dallas, United States. 1963

He’s been back in the nineteen sixties for nearly twice as long as he was the first time when he meets Diego in a bar. He’s no longer some washed-up pathetic nobody. He’s a person now. A person with his own cult and more money than Diego, by the looks of it. Though none of the siblings are particularly good with money. Funnily enough, financial planning hadn’t been on dear old dad’s curriculum. But here’s Diego, still with the hard boiled detective vibe going, just a new color scheme for a new decade.

Diego hugs him roughly, and Klaus realizes that he’s missed his brother. The bartender comes over. 

Diego orders a whiskey like he has something to prove. 

Klaus smiles too wide at the bartender. “I’ll have an orange juice please!”

The bartender nods, and leaves to make the drinks while Diego turns to him and asks “You’re not drinking?”

“I’m sober. Uhhhh almost two year now, though how you count it gets tricky, since we’ve gone back in time since I gave up drinking and drugs and most of my other vices.”

Diego almost laughs. “But you’re leading a cult? I assumed that everybody in that place was high all the time?”

“Oh, they most definitely are,” Klaus gesticulates wildly. “Helps keep them suggestible. But I’m not. It’s tempting, but-“

“Is it your man?” Diego’s voice is low. 

“Pardon?”

“The guy. The one from the war. Did you stay sober to see him?”

Klaus shakes his head. “He’s not a ghost. He’s alive.”

“What? But you can see Ben.”

“Ben is special.” Ben is sitting next to Klaus at the bar, but he’s stayed pretty quiet for this particular family reunion. Klaus glances over at him anyway. “He’s connected to me. And he’s got weird power shit going on. But Dave didn’t. He was just a normal guy. Is just a normal guy. He’s 26. Lives in Chicago. Has a boyfriend named Louis. Works at a bank. I looked him up.”

The bartender puts two glasses down in front of them. 

“So why didn’t you…?” Diego trails off, but the question is obvious. 

“And say what?” Klaus almost laughs. “Hi. You don’t know me, but you’re the only person I’ve ever really loved. Yeah. I think that’ll go over really well.”

Ben snorts. So he is listening. He’s always listening. 

“I mean, he went for you once,” Diego offers, and it’s almost like he’s trying to be a good brother. 

“He went for me in the middle of a war zone four months after his boyfriend, who he really loved, not Louis, I don’t know if he loves Louis, but the next one he does. And he only settled for me after that one died. He went for me from two years and one apocalypse ago. Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.”

“How do you know if you don’t try?” Diego is starting to get worked up. He looks so righteous. It’s sweet, really. 

Ben has moved to the other side of Diego and is staring at Klaus as if Ben himself has made these points at least once a week for two years. Which he has. 

Klaus ignores him. “Because he deserves to live as normal a life as he can for as long as he can. And because I can’t take him away from that. And because even if I did, if he met me now and it somehow worked, would that mean he wouldn’t meet me in the war? Would he already know me? Would that change what happened? Would my memories of it even stay the same? Will I even be in that war in this timeline? Who the fuck knows? Five might, but Five isn’t here, and even so, I’m not willing to risk it.”

“Risk what?”

“Risk it disappearing. All of it, those ten months.” Klaus shakes his head. “I’m not the person who will gamble the most precious thing I have anymore.”

“I just don’t get it,” Diego says in a huff. “If-“ he stumbles. “If Eudora- if Eudora were alive. If there were any chance that I could get back to her, could get her back and could do better this time, I would do anything.”

Ben has the good sense to stop glaring. 

Klaus puts a hand on Diego’s back. He’s seen it in movies, he’s pretty sure that’s an appropriately manly gesture for your grieving brother. “I’m sorry, Diego.”

Diego’s voice is soft. “I don’t know how to mourn someone who hasn’t even been born. I can’t go to her grave or carry her picture around or talk to her partner at the station or bring cake to her mom or anything. I’m just stuck with all of it.”

Klaus lifts his glass ironically. “To Reginald Fucking Hargreeves and the Umbrella Academy. So fucked up that we can’t even grieve properly.”

Diego snorts and tips his whiskey glass against Klaus’s OJ. 

“I wonder if it’s different for me, mourning in general,” Klaus says philosophically. “And even more now, I guess. Since I’m used to being able to see them, whether I want to or not, after they’re dead. I might have been able to see your detective if we’d stuck around in the ashes of the twenty-first century.”

Diego shakes his head. “I don’t know. I think that you being able to see her and hear her and I couldn’t would have been its own kind of torture. But I guess you could have conjured her maybe? With your powers?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“And then I could have seen her again.” Diego pauses for a moment with an expression that Klaus can’t read. “I dream about her sometimes. Not, like, anything, just she shows up. I’ll be walking a maze, and she’ll be there. We’ll all be back at the academy with Dad making us run stairs and she’s running with us. I’ll be sitting on some fucking beach with a purple sky and green sand and she’s next to me. What does that mean?”

“That you love her.” Klaus is stiller and smaller than he ever usually is when he’s conscious. 

“More than I love myself,” Diego repeats back to himself. “God the bastard really did a number on us. Can’t even love right.”

“We learned,” Klaus says softly. “For better or for worse.”

They drink in silence for a few moments, both lost in thought. 

Diego finally breaks it. He’s done with the memories.“So you’ve been free to enjoy all the orgies with your cult, then? No man to tie you down?”

“I don’t really,” Klaus says, loudly sipping his orange juice through a straw. “It wouldn’t do to start the AIDS crisis early.”

“Wait? You have AIDS?”

“Eh no,” Klaus shrugs. “It’s not actually AIDS til things are pretty far gone.” He glances at Diego’s shocked face. “But your question wasn’t actually about the medical terminology. Right, yeah, it turns out that doing all the drugs and fucking all the people means you pick up a few things. And HIV was one of them. But like, it’s fine in the future. I’m on the anti-virals. Fully suppressed. Well, not any more. They don’t have the meds yet. So I can’t take them, and when the meds are away, the virus will play. But it’s not fair to blame the 1960s. They don’t know that they need them. Which did make 1968 such a bitch when I was there. I had to be so much more careful. Man, the first time Dave and I-“

“No. No,” Diego stops him when he realizes what he’s about to hear. “Do not finish that story. Please.”

“Please,” Ben adds. 

“Anyway, this time around my cult is really big on using protection. Perks of being in charge, I guess.”

“I thought you weren’t sleeping with them!”

“I’m not! I just know from experience that it’s a good idea. Make sure they live to see the end of the world.”

“But wait-“ Diego has that look on his face like he’s been thinking too hard again. “You’re off your meds.”

“Yup!” Klaus pops the “p” on that word and waits for Diego to spit out whatever he is trying to communicate. 

“So that means you’re dying!” Klaus is really touched at his concern. He’d always thought that his life or death didn’t matter at all to his siblings.

“Diego, we’re all dying. That’s how being a human works. Trust me. I have loads of experience. Actually did die once back in the last apocalypse. Let me tell you, God is not as sweet as she looks-“

Diego doesn’t have the patience for his rambling. He’s like a dog with a bone. “But you’re dying faster. It’ll kill you without-“

“Diego,” Klaus says, placing his hands over his brothers’. “My darling twin brother from another mother. You and I both know that it would take a fucking miracle for me to live long enough for the virus to get me.”

Ben just looks at Klaus evenly.

Diego looks like he’s been slapped. Seems like he’s reliving all the jokes he made about finding Klaus dead in an alley. Eh, it’s probably good for his character. Dad used to love to do things to build their character. Why not honor his memory?

Right, because he was a bastard. 

Klaus tries to stop the spiral instead. “Don’t worry about me, Diego, really. I’m doing fine in this timeline. How are you? What are you up to?”

Diego tells him about his investigative work and the woman he’s just met and Klaus is proud of his ability to get Diego to just talk and not dwell on the past. Or is it technically the future? 

God, someone needed to explain to him the time travel grammar rules again. Five would be helpful for that. But he might never see Five again, so he should appreciate the brother he does have here. 

When their second round of drinks are finished and paid for, Diego stands and hugs him roughly. Klaus hugs him back, and it almost feels like they’re normal siblings struggling through testosterone poisoning to express their feelings to each other. It’s not a bad sensation. Maybe he should try to have drinks with Luther next. See if this works a second time. 

“I’ll see you around,” Diego says. “We should catch up again soon.” Klaus wonders if the catch in his voice is the stutter coming out at the emotion or if he’s just thinking about how much longer they’ll be able to get drinks together. 

“Namaste, my friend,” Klaus says in his silly cult voice. “May the darkness within you find peace in the light.”

“Did you steal that from Ben’s statue?”

“Ben doesn’t mind!” 

“Yes I do!” Ben calls. 

And with that, Klaus whisks himself out of the bar and back into 1963 proper.

  
  



End file.
